The Tree Killers

I was preparing to post the poem below which is about the pathology of those who kill trees to improve their views, or because they dislike the trees shedding leaves, or because trees cast shade over their gardens, or because trees 'harbour' birds that wake them, or because possums inhabit the hollows, or because they wish to 'develop' an area, or because they feel a neighbour is encroaching (via a tree) on their 'rights, and so on. This is a global disease, but has very particular inflections in Australia where it is not uncommon to hear literal hatred expressed towards tree life. The expression 'tree huggers' is mainstream and used pejoratively on bumper stickers. 

In this colonial/neo-colonial nation, the tree too often represents something to be overcome, to be defeated as part of the 'pastoral' control of space. Ancient trees are especially vulnerable, and today another grotesque case of tree murder is being discussed, with 'state officials' by their own admission having a hand in it (and tree drs and pseudo-arborists, 'pruners' and 'loppers') — an 800-year-old peppermint tree. 

This should be scrutinised and critiqued on a global scale, and is further evidence of the abuse of country that underwrites the colonial control still so dominant in Australia. This should never be able to happen, but it happens frequently. Too much of it locates around leisure and providing 'access to nature' — how many carparks, trails through forests, and so on are decimated in the name of tourism and entertainment? It's remorseless. 

Though there is the obvious large-scale bush clearing and destruction of forest around the country through logging (even where there's a cessation of old-growth logging, miners still make massive inroads... e.g. bauxite industry in WA's southwest jarrah forests), mining, housing developments degradation of forest by leisure activities, much tree killing is done 'privately' and secretively. 

In the last decade we've seen 400-year-old jarrah trees killed in the Challar Forest near Walpole and also the famous Gelorup Jarrah (300-400 years old) was 'mysteriously' felled during the horror discussions about the route of the Bunbury/Gelorup bypass (we witnessed the extent of this destruction a couple of weeks ago).  Among others! 

This poem focusses on the classic drill at the base and poison technique, much favoured by urban tree haters and also by rural retrogrades (sometimes arguing 'fire safety' as a trigger expression if they are caught... or some other such specious go-to...).  I was appalled to find that there's actually a Quora that discusses how to secretly kill 'unwanted' neighbour's trees, outlining herbiciding to 'girdling' (ring-barking... a favourite colonial-settler land-clearing technique, absorbed into the urban as part of the furtive neo-colonialism of Australian cities). People fuse their pathologies of tree-hate (and all it implies) into communities built on distance and anonymity. The world is killed anonymously.

To hate trees in this way is to hate the very essence and core of being. Without trees, the biosphere will be finished. The aim to control, confine and limit tree-life is part of a pathology of colonial control that merges with a desire for a legacy 'built' out of pioneering (as verb) habitat into conformity to try to (en)force disconnection from its sacredness.

The Tree Killers

 

 

To evade detection

they seem to come at night

with muffled drills

 

and slick injections

of herbicide

or cocktails of poison,

 

attacking the base

of the trunk

while lusting

 

for the roots — tap roots,

heart roots, lateral roots

even the fine and sinker roots;

 

to undress the crown

to suit their vision

of clarity and ‘silence’ —

 

bird homes removed,

leaf obscurantism in their vision

of skyscraper or oil-slicked

 

river, waking to traffic

without birdsong.

These tree killers

 

seem unaware

of the nature of souls,

poisoning opposite

 

a school, destroying

an ecosystem between sea

and cliffs, operating

 

as lone hands

or as paid-up hitters

to do the dirty work

 

of the moneyed

(the no proof who, me?

we're entitled brigade).

 

And sometimes,

it’s out of a deep ‘need’

for neatening the world,

 

for removing boughs

and twigs and interference

from their ambits;

 

it seems an untreated

pathology

given credence

 

by every mass

clearing of bushland

and forest, of trees

 

that have managed

to hang on till now,

offering their shade.

 

 

            John Kinsella